Mitch Sisskind - Correspondent at Large

August 13, 2018

They called him the old grumpus wumpusBut why? Why? Can you please explain thatTo me? Would you be so kind? Did I missSomething? I must have missed somethingBecause for the life of me I can’t understandWhy they called him the old grumpus wumpus.What got into them? What purpose could itPossibly serve? Is there some ulterior motive?Could you please take a moment out of your Busy schedule to enlighten me about this?Doesn’t it seem awfully mysterious to you?Everything was fine and then a minute laterThey called him the old gumpus wumpus.Oh, for Christ’s sake! Jesus Christ almighty!

August 09, 2018

You’re buying a can of tuna fish As you’ve done so many times Over the years but this is today, This is the exact can of tuna fish You’re buying now, it’s different From all other cans on the shelf, This is the Chicken of the Sea Light Chunk tuna fish in water You’re buying at this moment And you’re thinking of Liszt and Lina Schmalhusen as you buy it, The name of Lina Schmalhusen Echoing in your mind, ricocheting Around in your brain as you buy this tuna fish -- Lina Schmalhusen, Lina Schmalhusen -- and her rivalry With Dori Petersen, both of them Students in Liszt’s master classes For piano performance and the Rivalry getting worse and worse Until Liszt himself had to compose A stern letter to Dori Petersen and This is the precise can of tuna fish You buy on this day and you take it Home in your car in a paper bag.

You’re making a tuna melt as you have Often done in your life but never this one That you’re making at this exact moment In this kitchen with this can of tuna fish That you put in the sink and on the counter Beside the sink you place a bowl, a spoon, A spatula, a knife, a can opener, a lemon, A bottle of mayonnaise, a white onion, A pack of pre-sliced cheddar cheese, And two pieces of rye bread. Meanwhile Liszt is still on your mind -- Liszt, Liszt – And Lina Schmalhusen’s rivalry with Dori Petersen in 1883 when Liszt was Drinking absinthe and Achille Colonello, His manservant was powerless to stop him. You slice off a section of the onion and You dice it on a plastic cutting board, And you use the knife to sweep it off The board into the bowl as you return Your attention to the can of tuna fish In the sink and then you open the can With the can opener and then, without Removing the lid, you press down On the lid with your thumbs to drain Water from the opened can of tuna fish.

Has almost all of the water been drained From the can of tuna fish in the sink? You lift the top of the can for a moment And if too much water seems to remain You replace the top and -- with the can Still in the sink -- you press down again Even harder than before, after which You remove the top, discard it, and With the knife as your tool you transfer The tuna to the bowl where the onion is.Liszt suspended Dori Petersen from His master classes with that letter Stating that ‘this whole intrigue was ‘Initiated by you in a mean-spirited way.’ But then Lina Schmalhusen was caught Shoplifting so that Liszt, after assuring Himself of her innocence, felt obligated While the matter proceeded to trial To engage the judge and convince him To drop the charges. Now you place A skillet on a burner of the kitchen stove And turn on the flame to heat the skillet Even before the sandwich is actually Placed on the skillet and you do this For reasons that will be made clear.

You open the bottle of mayonnaise and Use the spoon to scoop out a dollop Of the mayonnaise which then goes into The bowl with the onion and the tuna, And all the while the skillet is heating. Still using the spoon, you amalgamate The contents of the bowl and then, Using the knife, you slice the lemon In half and drip some lemon juice Into the bowl. Moving quickly now, You distribute spoonfuls of the tuna Mixture onto a slice of the rye bread And when this is done you remove A slice of the cheddar cheese from Its package, spread the cheese on top Of the tuna, and cover it with the other Slice of bread to make a sandwich upon Which, using your full weight, you press Your hands down onto the sandwich So that, more often than not, some tuna Extrudes from the sides of the sandwich. This is tuna that you can replace beneath The top piece of the rye bread, or you can Ignore this tuna or discard this tuna which Is sometimes called orphaned tuna.

Why was it important to heat the skillet Even before the sandwich was finished? Why did Liszt exert himself on behalf of Lina Schmalhausen against Dori Petersen And for what reason did he do it again With Lina Schmalhausen’s shoplifting? Were the skillet not well-heated before Receiving the sandwich, then the side of the Sandwich that was heated first would heat Slower than the other side of the sandwich When the sandwich was turned over onto The now-hotter skillet, which could be Bothersome if the poorly heated side Were the side closest to the cheese And there would also be a tedious Turning over of the sandwich until both Sides were more or less evenly heated. Liszt’s concern for Lina Schmalhausen Likely arose from her introduction to Liszt By Empress Augusta of Prussia, to whom An indifference toward Lina Schmalhausen Would have seemed like a slap in the face. Liszt was now 73, in the twilight of his years. Lina accompanied him from town to town And generally made his life more bearable.

July 28, 2018

When David Shapiro blamed my ping-pong Victory on the distractions of what in a fit Of pique he called my flapping ostrich Gesticulations I ventured to remonstrate That in many of my life’s activities or even In most of them I was like a flapping ostrich, “And David,” I continued, “don’t expect me“To bury my head in the sand.” Oh reader,Do you recognize my irresistible reflex forThe comical riposte where the more drollCosmopolitan rejoinder of which John wasSuch a past master might be somethingI should strive to develop? On the island Of Hydra Leonard Cohen once said to me, “Sing your poems instead of reading them,“You will have a new career.” I tried butSuppressing my laughter proved impossibleCausing Leonard in a fit of pique to exclaim,“Take it seriously, Kenneth!” and I replied,“How can I take it seriously when I can’t sing?”

July 26, 2018

At first he was Little J.A. in a Prospect of Flowers But he kept on doing it and by the end he was in The Library of America – two volumes, mind you. “Here a scarf flies, there an excited call is heard,” That’s his best line I believe, but “Attention, shoppers” Is also wonderful and there are so many good ones. Some might say that “mild effects are the result” Sums up his oeuvre but I certainly don’t agree And if I ever said that it was just to get his goat As the shadows lengthened and we were wondering If man is horrible, for instance, as he wrote in “These Lacustrine Cities.” Once I recalled to him His recommendation of years past that I read The poetry of Muriel Rukeyser and he replied, “Are you sure it was me?” with that sly grin and The hint of insinuation like old wine that has Almost turned to water except there’s something Still going on there, but what? Or is it just you?

July 24, 2018

There was a day I mused to the class How making love with Queen Elizabeth Would be interesting – surely at Columbia I was the only professor who thusly mused And I often mused, as when I mused how Poets would be interested in the word ashtray But prose writers would be interested in all The different people who used the ashtray Or when I mused on Friday, February 7, 1964, As the Beatles first arrived on these shores That it would be interesting to be famous like The Beatles and meet beautiful Brit women And one of the students said, “Elizabeth again?” So I laughed and mused, “God save the queen.”

July 22, 2018

What did you think was going happen, anyway? Don’t say you were never warned! Old Herrick’s “Live here blitheful while ye may” gets the message Across, or how about this one: “The worms crawl in,"The worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on"Your snout.” It’s not like having tenure at Columbia, Where it’s almost impossible to get rid of you. In fact, You’ll get rid of yourself, the only question is when. That grumpus-wumpus Philip Larkin put it this way: “Most things never happen, this one will.” Well, okay, You get it. Uncle! Call off the dogs! “Though he slay me,"Yet I will honor him,” spake Job in the Book of Job So let’s go to the Cedar Bar. Except that’s closed. What about Max’s Kansas City? The West End?

July 19, 2018

"It's very difficult to criticize my French, since I speak perfectly." -- Kenneth Koch, in conversation

It’s very difficult for me to write this poem After I’ve been dead for eighteen years Or maybe even longer depending on when You’re reading it but it’s very difficult For me to know exactly when that might be Since keeping track of time is very difficult For the dead with one day much like another but Not writing this poem would also be very difficult Because I started writing poems at a young age And it’s one of the things I got used to without Ever getting completely used to it like making love Is something else I never exactly got used to Since it’s very difficult to make love perfectly Like I could speak French perfectly.

It’s very difficult to write about my future at this point Since I don’t have one but I can draw inspiration From John’s lines in Civilization and Its Discontents, “I could only gaze into the distance at my life like “A saint’s with each day distinct” and in fact each day Is so distinct that even long-forgotten remarks Flit into one’s consciousness like the randomness Of a hummingbird’s flight across a table set forA charming breakfast in the backyard of the parents Of a beautiful and brilliant girl you want to marry Despite a rather obvious age differential and suddenly you Hear yourself saying, “Rubens married Helene Fourment “When she was just sixteen and they even had five children.” Wait a minute, where was I?

You see, it’s very difficult to manage a train of thought when The tracking mechanisms of time and space are Removed but I was about to say that slapdash reminiscences Now crop up like bumblebees not entirely unwelcome But somewhat alarming all the same and in particular I had In mind the first year I taught writing at Columbia when Apropos of who knows what I observed to the startled class, “When you’re twenty you think you will never die but when “You’re forty you know you will.” Funilly enough (funnily enough!) I was only thirty-nine so I was kind of looking into the future Except not like when you meet a beautiful girl and you know you Will make love with her without knowing exactly when But more like you’re speaking French with her and she speaks Perfectly and then she uses a word you’ve still got to learn.

July 17, 2018

If I could push a button and write A new Kenneth Koch poem I would push a button and write That I could push a button so We are hitchhiking again near Vallauris and the sky is cloudy But who cares since we’re young And plain silly and when rain falls We keep on skylarking as they say In the army until we knock it off As they also say in the army and We make love and write poems And if we get old I push the button Again a hundred thousand times.

November 15, 2017

Trapped on a long drive with an atheistI closed my eyes and sought refuge in My earliest erotic fantasies of capture By an Apache warrior maiden, cruelAt first but then merely unpredictable.As the atheist droned on the scent ofFormaldehyde characteristic of hisPersuasion suffused the vehicle andObligated me to explain this aroma To the warrior maiden who fiercely Demanded ‘What’s that awful smell?’‘Formaldehyde,’ I answered and With a shrill war-whoop she baredHer breasts and pounced on me.

November 13, 2017

My friend died and a few days laterIn a dream called me on my cell;‘Hey how are you doing?’ he said.‘I can’t complain,’ was my reply,‘And you? How is it being dead?’A brief silence and he declared,‘Nobody has to do it, just use‘Gorilla Glue, man.’ I took this in And asked. ‘But use Gorilla Glue For what, old friend? The sundry‘Household tasks?’ His reply hadSome heat: ‘Use Gorilla Glue, bro,‘If you know what’s good for you!‘Gorilla Glue!’ And he was gone.

November 07, 2017

Hello, I am immune to misfortune. Virtue is sufficient for my happiness. Passion is not my purview nor is Crying over spilled milk or laughingLike a horse my habitude. I guessYou’d call me a stoic and I admitThat the Enchiridion by EpictetusIs one of my all-time favorite books.So picture me in your mind’s eye.Do you see an old man strugglingUp a hill or a beautiful young girl Brushing her hair? Well, whateverYou see is a function your own Hangups, not mine or anyone else’s.

November 04, 2017

The seeming impossibility of the Great PyramidEngendered in him such contempt for peopleThat he chose isolation lest he start screamingHow petty and foolish were their vaingloriousAccomplishments compared to even a single Miraculous fact about the Great Pyramid. Every inch of his shitty room was choked withHandwritten manuscripts, drawings, websiteImages downloaded over the years, and booksOn aspects of Egyptology. To make ends meetHe worked as a gofer in a real estate law firm Filing eviction papers in the city hall’s stale airWhile distancing himself from that wage slaveryWith thoughts of the Great Pyramid’s mysteries.

Then one day a young paralegal came to work At the firm. Observing her at the copying machineHe was so flabbergasted by her perfect proportions And symmetries that a vast new area of researchOpened for him that night in which he learned how Many of the ancient world’s first investigations ofRatio and design were attempts to identify theIdeal proportions of feminine beauty. Consequently The bust of Queen Nefertiti created by the sculptor Thutmose in approximately 1350 BC became his New infatuation whereby he conceived of NefertitiAs an anthropomorphic culmination of principles Materialized centuries earlier in the Great Pyramid.

There came a day, again at the copying machine, When he sought to explain his recondite investigations To the young paralegal: how the secrets of insight andAchievement by the ancients lay first in empirically Deriving laws of womanly allure, then expressingThose discoveries in the Great Pyramid and finally Rendering them in flesh and blood so to speak as the Bust of Nefertiti. ‘The proof of the pudding,’ he saidExcitedly, desperately, with everything riding on this, “The proof of the pudding,” he gasped as he shot herA raised-eyebrow glance connoting some vision of An impossible intimacy, “The proof of the pudding is In what the name Nefertiti literally means -- which is -- Which is – um – um -- the beautiful one has arrived!”

November 02, 2017

One class of problems – Math people will attest to this – can be clearlyArticulated whereupon It only remains for an Answer to be found Or never to be foundBut finding the answerIs of small significanceAnd even of sad banalityRelative to the problem’sArticulated clarity which Inherently demotes it to A purgatory of minor interest.

Another class of problem Ghostly and insinuatingCan’t be rendered in words Or symbols but you definitely Know it’s there, you feel it As something very wrong With you but what? What?You try to find words for itOr to create a mental image For this problem in intimate Conversations or before sleepAnd if it occurs to you thatYou might not awaken -- Or is that the problem at last?

October 20, 2017

Mitch Sisskind, sporting his newest collection of poetry and prose entitled Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight, read for The New School’s MFA Writing program on October 11th 2017, and was joined by David Lehman for a conversation which proved memorable and intriguing from the start.

Those familiar with the work of Mitch Sisskind had an idea of what to expect: a witty, playful, part-time naughty/part-time biblical writer who is not afraid to “go there.” And for those who were unfamiliar, well, I think the title of the book speaks right to that tumultuous core. Reading his work some weeks before the forum, I had contrived a mixed opinion over the work of Mitch Sisskind. Many poems were inviting, such as “To No Place He Is Called…” a poem which captures the never-ending instability of living, and leaving, or the well-known poem “Like a Monkey,” which touches upon religion, beauty, and the arguments among sages. The wife in “The Devotions of Jean Blysema” also had me charmed and intrigued, but often some of the characters in the book were downright unlikeable and had the uptight feminist in me blushing, or worse.

But of course, these notions were the first to be dispelled, once I heard the pieces from the writer’s mouth, coupled with hilarious interludes, some giving background, some talking about writing, some laughing in the middle of a particularly funny or outrageous line, signaling to me that he was not quite a vulgar man, but a guy who liked to have fun. I was won over right away, not only by the author’s authenticity but by his ability to lower the stakes, thus, bringing us into the realm of the familiar rather than the formal.

Among the pieces heard at the forum were “Balzac Speaks of Salvation Through Sexual Intercourse,” the playful/experimental “Then All Hell Breaks Loose: Thirteen Films of Tokyo Lipscomb,” and “Three Sonnets,” at request. The Tokyo Lipscomb poem is a list of films made up of interchangeable characters, each with an iconic epithet which is repeated throughout, and various storylines ending in, “and then all hell breaks loose." The other poems mentioned are sonnets. “And just so you know,” Mr. Sisskind added, “a fourteen-line poem is a sonnet.” This comment opened up a conversation between Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind which wondered at the essential mechanics of a sonnet. If not a strict rhyme scheme or meter, then length and a turn or complication after the eighth line must suffice, and well, said Mr. Sisskind, doesn’t a turn usually come toward the end anyway? I like that Sisskind’s sonnets are sarcastic and casual, unlike so many other sonnets that turn out to be quite stuffy.

We also heard the title poem, “Do Not Be A Gentleman When You Say Goodnight,” which is a villanelle, “Like a Monkey,” and parts of “Twenty Questions,” which is an imagined dialogue between the author and his deceased father. The interludes between these poems gave the audience more on Mr. Sisskind’s background as a boy from Chicago (with a noticeable midwestern accent, I might add) and as a student of a particularly hip rabbi who taught Mr. Sisskind a great many things about how to perceive the stories of the Bible and all the people in it with an open heart, even the ones we think evil. These footnotes gave depth to the poems’ inquiries into Beauty and Heaven and God and the Afterlife, which are lighthearted and approachable, but poignant. I thought back to characters in Sisskind’s work that I had thought of as, if not evil, certainly unpleasant, and I asked myself, did I learn anything about them or about myself through encountering them? If so, it was well worth the read.

In between the poems, we captured glimpses of a wonderful philosophy of writing with roots in the New York School of writing and branches and leaves in the contemporary poetry world. This is a philosophy of writing in which one need not be so gosh darn serious all of the time. One can take liberties. One can be silly or gritty or gruesome as long as the quality or intention of work doesn’t suffer. Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind spoke afterwards about the way humor has been far underrated in modern poetry as a cheap device or an easy way out of doing hard work, a construct that their teacher, the celebrated Kenneth Koch, struggled with and fought, because, as Mr. Koch said, something can turn out to be funny, but it’s not only funny. Mr. Sisskind’s poems proved to me that a poem can well succeed by having fun, by getting a good laugh, and by sharing the gritty along with the sentimental. Along with comedy and poetic forms, Dr. Lehman and Mr. Sisskind talked about the way in which one could write in voices, allowing characters to develop through the lines without his crafting much at first, but following the momentum. This discussion, along with the way Mr. Sisskind read his less likeable characters with a playful grin, reminded me that poetry need not always be a poet's philosophy of Life, or even a representation of truth or reality at all. It can just be a piece that flows and takes the reader somewhere.

Besides the intricacies and joys of literature and writing, I enjoyed learning a few secrets, not only of our guest, Mitch Sisskind, but of our own David Lehman, who could not help but bring up a few lost frogs from their years in the halls of Columbia. It was a drizzly Wednesday in Greenwich Village I will not soon forget, where two poets sat and talked literature, Kenneth Koch, teaching writing, and practical jokes, and everybody had a grand old time.

(Ed note: Find recent poems by Mitch Sisskind, including a series of Milania [Trump] poems, here.)

Virginia Valenzuela is a poet, essayist, and yogi from New York City. She holds BA’s in Creative Writing, Literary Studies, Women’s Studies, and a minor in Film Studies. She is a second-year MFA candidate for Poetry and Creative Nonfiction at the New School. You can find more of her work on her blog, Vinny the Snail.

October 06, 2017

Old age, Tolstoy wrote, is the biggest surpriseIn a man's life. So true! Childhood hoursIn the ancient car I now recall, the hot months,Sox game on the radio, soporific Bob ElsonMumbling in the microphone, "Um, strike one,"And at bat Sherman Lollar, sloth-like catcher,Elson droning, "Ball four. It's a base on balls,"Henri Bergson called this perceived duration,The sense of time as elastic phenomenonStretched or compressed by stoic's fortitudeOr child's impatience: "Are we there yet?"And this is where the surprise comes in.Yes, my good man, you have arrived there.Yes, you are there all right, ya big dummy.

In fact, you've already been there for a whieExcept "there" is not "where" or even "what"You would have imagined. "There" is "here,"Wherever you happen to be at the time.As the snail everywhere bears its shell,You and the destination are one now,Not where you're going but what you are.

But we will grieve not, as Wordsworth wrote.Or perhaps we will grieve. Shall we? No matter,It doesn't really amount to a hill of beans.That's just how the cookie crumbles, That was the funeral of Hector.

-- Mitch Sisskind

Veteran sportscaster Mitch Sisskind, prize-winning author of "Monsters of the Midway," who has covered the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers in a career spanning four decades, has now branched out in verse and written his "Iliad." My source is Pierre Menard, who under a pseudonym acted as the first United States citizen with a French first name ever to be a president's press secretary. To call Menard an informed source is to obfuscate the understatement. For those not in the know, a brief synopsis is in order.

Back in the day, Menard flexed his chutzpah chops by dropping his last name in favor of that of the notoriously reclusive author of TheCatcher in the Rye. His project: to write, with word-for-word fidelity to the original, "The Catcher in the Rye" with the difference that the book became an allegory of the life of Roy Campanella, catcher for the Brooklyn Dodgers in their heyday, who befriended pitcher Don Newcombe in his losing battle with rye, bourbon, scotch, and Canadian whiskey. Yet Newk, who squandered his great gifts and faced a depression like you wouldn't believe after Yogi Berra went deep on him twice and the Yanks clobbered the Bums 9-0 in the seventh game of the 1956 World Series, is one of the few from that legendary team still alive and well.

It was in 1959 that the soi-disant Pierre Salinger adopted the pseudonym of Mitch Sisskind.

On a dare from Deejay Shap and Larry Weed, Sisskind agreed to hole himself up in a Hilton hotel -- the one in Pisa known to the natives as the "tiltin' Hilton" -- for twenty-four hours with no books or reading material handy except the Gideon Bible and the San Francisco Chronicle. At two hour intervals a kindly hotel staffer would knock on the door saying "My name is Alan, and if it isn't Alan, it's Donald" and offering snacks: "Coffee's a dime." But Sisskind vowed to disregard any such temptation and to limit his responses to the names of wrestling holds.

By the end of twenty-four hours Sisskind had written his Iliad after escaping from handcuffs and leg-chains. He then took a bath, watched porn on demand, had a Coke, read three war novels by Herman Wouk, James Jones, and Norman Mailer, and became a gemologist. We post the written results above and invite readers to compare the lines with the Homeric original (chapter 22: pages 397-411 in Rieu's prose translation; or see Lattimore, lines 265-261). "There is no question in my mind that Achilleus was the greatest athlete of all time," Sisskind told Janet Benderman in their Partizansky Review interview of 2008. "Achilleus was god's man, less mortal than divine."

About his accomplishment Sisskind said, "I did not write The Iliad. I wrote my Iliad, and I called it 'Iliad,' for each of us must have his own Iliad, alas, do we not?"

"Iliad" is posted together with other compelling works -- by Angela Ball, Terence Winch, Sharon Mesmer, Jim Cummins, Ron Padgett, Led Upton, Bill Zavatsky, and worthy others including Denise Duhamel, guest editor of the 2013 edition of Best American Poetry -- in the one-shot, hot-shot, big-hit lit mag that Martin Stannard put together for the world to see on August 1, 2013. -- DL

Mitch Sisskind, is a Los Angeles-based poet and fiction writer and a renowned wit and savvy commentator on the shifting mores of American life. He is the author of Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight (The Song Cave, 2016) as well as two collections of short fiction: Visitations (1984) and Dog Man Stories (1993). His poems were included in the Best American Poetry anthologies for 2009 and 2013. Moderated by David Lehman, Poetry Chair and Professor, Creative Writing Program.

"Donald Barthelme told me, early on, that Mitch Sisskind is the funniest living writer in America—and when I read "A Mean Teacher," I was convinced. This collection renders me helpless with laughter and admiration. Man, is he oblique or what?" —Michael Silverblatt, Host, Bookworm (KCRW)

"Mitch Sisskind’s collection of poems and stories, Do Not Be a Gentleman When You Say Goodnight, is a retrospective of a near fifty-year career of provocative, unnerving, absurd, but most of all, searingly funny comic writing. Relying on irony, paradox, and the unexpected to evoke emotion, Sisskind’s comic talent lies in his ability to be at once humorous and moving, reassuring and unsettling." Thomas Moody